Look, Palace is amazing! The graphics are incredible, the drops fly off before you can even finish entering your card details and when you’re in the wild sporting a Palace tri-ferg, it’s like a secret handshake with every skater and streetwear head on the planet. But here’s the truth no one wants to admit out loud , Palace hoodies are routinely being sold at £150 to £200, the tees are £60 to £80, and if you’re trying to cop a Palace jacket when it offers a discount, you’re basically in a hunger games situation where the bots eat your hopes for breakfast. Not very available, particularly in 2026 when everything is more expensive than ever.
The thing is brands such as Palace aren’t as uncommon as they seem. There is a vast universe of skate and street labels with the same spirit of bold graphics, irreverent humor, and true subculture DNA, and they all come at the same price as you might cry at your bank statement. This article will guide you in finding them, wearing them and feeling good doing it.
What Actually Makes Palace So Special
This enables you to understand what you’re really searching for before you start looking at alternatives. Originally founded in London in 2009 by Lev Tanju, Palace was born out of the UK skate scene and not just a corporate boardroom making cool. That matters. As far as the brand is concerned, there has always been a real quality to it: those creating the brand have skated, know the culture, and truly didn’t give a fuck about the rules the fashion industry has.
Different because graphics are absurdist, British, specific and real. It is real scarcity, not manufactured hype because of the limited drop model. Then came the co-signs: Pharrell with Palace; the entire rap and grime community taking up Palace; a Reebok collab; a Ralph Lauren collab that somehow didn’t feel obligatory. Palace never lost its edge and was the link between skate culture, UK street wear and the world of luxury.
That’s really what you want to expect from brands such as Palace: authenticity, graphics, personality and a community of people, and a price that’s at least vaguely realistic. This is where you can find them.
Yardsale
If Palace is the big brother and he’s all the rage, Yardsale is the little brother and he’s cooler these days, IMO. Not only is Yardsale out of London, but it’s been quietly cultivating one of the most popular followings in the UK skateboarding community since about 2014. Its presence is all over the East London skate scene and the style is somewhere between sporty sportswear, classic skate graphics and the type of clothes that are meant to be worn by a skateist who really does skate to work.
Expect Yardsale hoodies to be priced between £80 to £110, and tees between £35 and £50, which is much more affordable than Palace the whole way through. The drops are more modest and sell out fast, but the brand’s surrounding community keeps things real instead of being about the hype. If you are in the UK and you need something that’s got high local credibility now, Yardsale should be at the top of your list.
Hélas
Hélas is a French skate company founded by skateboarder Lucas Puig that has been doing an intriguing thing since 2012: Blending European football culture with skate aesthetic in a way that doesn’t even seem like a marketing idea. Consider graphic logos, tracksuits and caps that pay homage to the skatepark and terraces.
Prices are extremely reasonable and the tee prices are priced around £35-45 and caps are priced around £30-40. It is of fair quality, has real pro skater support and the European taste makes it a different product to American products. In the same way as you’d feel better for knowing about it than you would be for not knowing about it, Hélas is the kind of label you feel darn good about knowing about.
Quasi Skateboards
While Quasi is an American skate brand, it is here because the graphics are just one of the best in skateboarding history. The brand, which was established in 2014 by Chad Bowers and Josh Kalis, has always been on the more cerebral and artistic side of skate culture than many brands are. The decks are the showstoppers, though the clothing is always top-notch.
The Tees are about $40 – $50 and the Hoodies are about $70 – $90; so at the current exchange rate you are looking at spending about half the amount of a Palace hoodie. If you are interested in graphic design and want your clothes to look that way, then Quasi is truly one of the best to have!
Carpet Company
On the other hand, there’s the New York-based Carpet Company, the type of brand that Palace fans always get to. The brand’s energy is so distinct: chaotic, funny, graphic heavy and really, really not serious at all. The graphics bear many hallmarks of outsider art and internet humor, and yet not exactly plagiarizing.
But when compared with the price of their products, Hoodies are priced around $90 to $120 and Tees are around $40 to $55 making Carpet a true competitive product. The brand also has decent levels in stock compared to Palace drop so you may just be able to… buy the thing you want. Revolutionary concept, honestly.
Theories of Atlantis
Theories of Atlantis is a skate and lifestyle company that has a very weird and conspiratorial aesthetic, and a sort of cosmic and a very hilarious. The graphics embrace conspiracy theories, ancient civilisations and some sort of deadpan humour that fits perfectly into skate-culture. It’s the brand for the person who watches documentaries at 2am on Atlantis and also does some kickflips.
The pricing is very affordable with most tees priced from $35-$45 and the entire line well below the Palace price point. There’s not a ton of mainstream awareness around the brand yet and that makes it a flex to wear for those who know.
Ripndip
Since 2009, Ripndip has existed and has created one of the most recognisable and rude skate mascots of all time: Lord Nermal, a cat residing in a pocket who gives very, very rude gestured a very, very regular basis. The brand is downright silly, downright graphic and completely dedicated to its bit, which has garnered it a large global audience over the years.
Tees are usually sold for USD 30-40, and the brand often offers discounts and partnerships that drive prices down even more. For unmistakable graphics that are easy to recognize and at a pretty cheap price range, Ripndip actually delivers. It’s also widely available in skate shops and online stores, not as widely distributed as some of the smaller labels on this list, but easy to come by anyway.
Butter Goods
Canadian, based in Vancouver, Butter Goods has been making a serious dent since 2009 in the skate and streetwear game. The brand’s style is even more polished, understated, and a little less edgy than say, Ripndip or Carpet , it’s more PG-13, less U.S. mariachi.The style is more refined, slightly toned down, and a little more sensible and wearable than something like Ripndip or Carpet, with clean type, workwear influences, and a Pacific Northwest sensibility that’s grounded and wearable but not boring.
Hoodies tend to sit around $80 to $110, tees at $35 to $50. The quality: price ratio is very good, and the brand always makes items that can last long as far as construction and design longevity goes. For those who want their wardrobe to lean more towards the everyday, and still have some real skate credibility, then Butter Goods is the way to go.
The Culture Around These Brands
Being a world of brands, it is important to familiarize oneself with why it exists in the first place, as it is for more than the price of goods. Palace helped popularise the skate/Streetwear crossover and this is a tradition that goes back a long way. The early 2010s, the “Odd Future” phase, with Tyler the Creator and everybody else blending Supreme with thrift shop items or their own stuff, demonstrated a generation that the culture was more important than the cost. Lil Wayne has always been a guy that wears his own style, and that is even before the day the concept of skate fashion became popular.
The skate scene here in the UK is very active and prevalent. It’s not only those from South London, Bristol, Manchester and beyond, who are making some of the most interesting video content, developing their own brands, it’s them making a visual culture genuinely exciting. But so does a wider marketplace of small British brands and independent stores carrying the labels on this list, and that’s where Yardsale is located.
Where to Actually Find These Brands
Most of these labels are found at independent skate shops, both in brick-and-mortar stores and online. Yardsale, Hélas, Butter Goods and other brands are found at Slam City Skates, Route One and smaller independent shops in major cities in the UK on a regular basis. The move in the US is Cool N’ Cool, Tactics and local independent shops.
ASOS offers a changing range of brands related to skate and is worth visiting occasionally. The international labels are available in various online skate shops, such as SkateHut, Warehouse Skateboards and Tactics. If it’s not available without the hassle, direct shipping is often the option of brand websites.
The Secondhand Palace Loophole
That’s something that’s never said enough about brands such as Palace , sometimes it’s a smartest step to simply purchase a used Palace. For older Palace apparel, you can expect to get a £40 to £80 price tag on Depop or Vinted – which is far less than you would spend on a new Yardsale hoodie. The ubiquitous graphics, the real deal, the tri-ferg , for really competitive prices.
Patience and knowing what to look for are the things that are important. Over the years, the brand has manufactured a lot of palace graphics and these are easily found in resale sites.The Palace has been producing a lot of graphics over the years and if you are looking for some of the older ones, you will find that they are present in resale sites. Not all things are rare and coveted, some are just good clothes that somebody wore twice and got rid of. You can use saved searches on Depop, regularly check Vinted and start finding Palace pieces for prices that wouldn’t make all the premium talk seem so intimidating.
The Bottom Line
Skate culture wasn’t about the highest price, it was about feeling the most original, the most fun and creating something tangible with like-minded people. Skateboarding has always had a certain kind of brands, they just weren’t the ones to be seen on Instagram or mainstream brands every time.
Any of the above brands will get you into a conversation at the skatepark and get you acknowledged by people that know the culture and keep money in your pocket for what really matters. Again – as with the decks above – if you purchase more to replace more decks you’ll be in it within a week.
Do wear what you love, do buy from brands with real roots and do remember the best fits have always been made to know more than those in the room that they are in, not more than them.
